Paul prayed in tongues more than anyone in Corinth, and kept it between himself and God unless someone could interpret.
Praying in tongues is prayer the Holy Spirit gives in a language you never learned, spoken to God rather than to people. Paul says it builds up the person praying, he did it more than anyone he wrote to, and he kept it private unless someone could interpret.
At Sound of Heaven we believe the gift is active today. We also believe it is not a badge, not a test of whether you have the Spirit, and not something to shout over a room that cannot understand it.
The rest of this study walks through the verses that say it, the ones people stretch, and the mistakes on either side.
A badge that proves you are further along. A performance for the room. A trance where you lose control.
Speech aimed at God, not people. It builds up the one praying, who can start, stop, and stay quiet when it would confuse others.
Most confusion comes from mixing two settings: tongues in a gathering, which needs interpretation, and tongues in prayer, which is between you and God. Our wider study on what the Bible says about speaking in tongues covers Pentecost, Corinth and the whole picture. This one stays in the prayer closet.
“For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit.”
1 Corinthians 14:2 (ESV)The speech goes up, not out. Nobody understands it, and Paul does not treat that as a defect. It is prayer.
“Mysteries” does not mean secret knowledge that makes you an insider. It means the content is hidden from speaker and hearers alike. For anyone carrying a grief too big for sentences, that sounds like mercy.
The person is not switched off either. In verse 15 Paul prays with his spirit and with his mind also. Your spirit prays in words you did not learn while your mind stays awake, choosing to keep going. That is cooperation, not a trance.
1 Corinthians 14 is often read as Paul scolding tongues. Read slowly, it is Paul sorting tongues into the right room.
No one understands him, because he is not talking to them. It is addressed to the Father, not the church.
“The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.” Paul contrasts two good things. He is not calling the first one selfish.
“I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also.” Paul's answer is both.
“I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind.” Both halves are true at once.
“If there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God.” The gift is not switched off. It is redirected.
The same man who limits tongues in the gathering thanks God he prays this way more than the whole church. If private tongues were suspect, verse 18 would make no sense. The limit is on the setting, not the gift. In verse 5 he even says, “Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy.”
To build, as in a house. Paul uses it for strengthening a person or a church.
The same verb in both halves. Tongues builds up the one praying, prophecy builds up the church. Two kinds of building, not a good one and a bad one.
“Building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit.” Jude uses a compound of the same verb, epoikodomeō, next to Spirit-led prayer.
Paul never chose between tongues and understanding. He did both, and knew which belonged in which room. That is the pattern for all of the spiritual gifts: freedom, shaped by love for the people around you.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Three more passages come up in almost every conversation about praying in tongues. They are rich, and honestly less direct than they are often made to sound.
“The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” Whether this includes tongues is genuinely debated.
“Praying in the Holy Spirit.” Jude does not mention tongues. The phrase covers Spirit-led prayer of every kind.
“Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” It closes the armor of God passage, and it is wider than tongues.
The one chapter that talks directly about praying in a tongue. Read the others in its light.
Romans 8:26 is the one most often quoted as a tongues verse. Some Pentecostal and charismatic readers hear Paul describing the Spirit praying through a believer beyond ordinary language, which is how many experience tongues.
Others read the groaning as the Spirit's own. John Herbert of Maranatha Baptist Seminary puts the objection sharply: “if it can be shown that the groanings actually belong to the Spirit, then this theory has no footing.” The word behind “too deep for words” can mean unspoken, which suggests something quieter than tongues. And this help belongs to every believer, while 1 Corinthians 12:30 assumes not everyone speaks in tongues.
Our view: Romans 8:26 is about the Spirit carrying your prayers when you do not know what to ask, and many find tongues is one way that help arrives. But the verse does not say tongues, and we will not pretend it does. Jude and Ephesians describe a whole life of Spirit-led prayer, the ground where intercessory prayer and praying in tongues both grow.
Which passage speaks directly about praying in a tongue?
“If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays.” Paul names it outright. Romans 8 and Ephesians 6 describe Spirit-led prayer more broadly.
Some say the gift ended with the apostles. Others make it the proof that you are really filled. Both hurt people, and Scripture refuses both.
Cessationism deserves its strongest form. Its best defenders are careful Bible readers. They argue that the sign gifts confirmed the apostles' message while the New Testament was being written, that 1 Corinthians 13:10 has partial things passing away “when the perfect comes,” and that much of today's tongues looks nothing like Acts 2. They have watched real abuse and want to protect people.
We think they are wrong. Paul closes the chapter with a plain instruction: “do not forbid speaking in tongues” (14:39). Nothing ties the gifts to the completion of the Bible, and the “perfect” in chapter 13 is about seeing face to face, not a book. Our study on cessationism works through it. A gift misused in Corinth was corrected, not cancelled.
Some believers hold that genuine tongues are always real human languages the speaker never learned, as at Pentecost. Linguists who studied recorded tongues, William Samarin most famously, found it does not behave like a human language. So, the argument goes, most modern practice is not the biblical gift.
Acts 2 really was known languages. But Corinth sounds different. Paul says “no one understands” (14:2), mentions “the tongues of men and of angels” (13:1), and treats interpretation as a spiritual gift, not a translator's job. Linguistics can describe the sound. It cannot tell us where the prayer is going.
This one wounds quietly. New believers and sincere seekers are told that without tongues they do not have the Spirit. Some are coached at an altar to repeat syllables until something comes. Many leave feeling second class.
Paul's question in 1 Corinthians 12:30, “Do all speak with tongues?”, expects the answer no. Romans 8:9 says anyone who belongs to Christ has his Spirit. Tongues is a gift the Spirit gives, not the receipt that proves he came. The related question of fillings and the baptism of the Holy Spirit has its own study.
Sound of Heaven believes praying in tongues is a real, active gift of the Holy Spirit today, available to believers who ask, and good for the one who prays. Cessationism is wrong here, though many who hold it love Jesus deeply.
Tongues is not the evidence that someone has the Spirit. Every believer has him. And tongues spoken aloud in a gathering with no interpretation is out of order, whatever the intention. Paul's rule in 14:28 is not a suggestion.
The gift comes from the Holy Spirit, and he does not humiliate people. Teaching that shames a believer for having it, or for not having it, has missed his character.
Here is how praying in tongues tends to fit into a life of prayer the way Paul describes it. Not a required order, just a pattern.
Thanksgiving, Scripture, the names on your heart. Our study on how to pray is a good place to start if prayer itself feels unfamiliar.
When the burden is bigger than your sentences, pray in tongues. Quietly, walking, driving. Prayer, not performance.
“One who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret” (14:13). Ask God what he is doing in you.
Ephesians 6:18 calls us to prayer that never really stops. Our piece on praying without ceasing shows what that looks like.
If you have never prayed in tongues and want to, ask. Jesus said the Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13). You do not need someone to hand you syllables or to work yourself into a state. Open your mouth in faith and speak to God. If it does not come on your timetable, you have lost nothing. You are still his, still full of his Spirit.
Some of you were told you were lesser because this never happened for you. Others were told what you experienced in prayer was only emotion. Both messages can sit in you for years.
Neither is the Father's voice. He is not grading you by your gifts. If you want someone to pray with you, without pressure or a script, send us a prayer request and a real person will pray with you.
Paul says in Galatians 4:6 that God sent “the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” That is the heart of all Spirit-led prayer, tongues included. It is not you climbing up to God with the right sounds.
When the Spirit prays through you past your vocabulary, he draws you into the Son's own relationship with the Father, in the Kingdom that is already here.
So tongues is never the point. Jesus is. The gift is a door into deeper conversation with the God he revealed, and like every gift it is measured by love.
For more on the Spirit's work in everyday life, read how to walk in the Spirit, what happened on the day of Pentecost, and what prophecy in the Bible is. You can also read what we believe or plan a visit and pray with us in person.
Praying in tongues is a real gift for today, prayer from your spirit to God that builds you up, practiced freely in private and with interpretation in public, never a badge and never a test, and always pointing you back to the Father revealed in Jesus.
Hungry for this gift, unsure about it, or hurt by how it was taught? Send us a note and someone will pray with you.
Yes. Paul writes about it directly in 1 Corinthians 14. He says the one who speaks in a tongue speaks to God and builds himself up, and he thanks God that he speaks in tongues more than all the Corinthians. He tells the church not to forbid it. What he limits is public tongues with no interpretation, not private prayer. Sound of Heaven believes the gift is active today.
Every Christian has the Holy Spirit, and any believer can ask God for this gift. Paul wished they all spoke in tongues, but in 1 Corinthians 12:30 he also asks, do all speak with tongues, expecting the answer no. So ask freely and without pressure. If it has not happened for you, it does not mean you lack the Spirit or that God is holding out on you.
It is the same gift used in two settings. In private prayer, tongues is addressed to God and builds up the one praying, and no interpretation is needed. In a gathering, tongues spoken aloud to the room must be interpreted so everyone is built up. If no one can interpret, 1 Corinthians 14:28 says to keep silent in church and speak to yourself and to God.
It is debated. Romans 8:26 says the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Some Pentecostal and charismatic readers see tongues there. Others argue the groaning belongs to the Spirit himself, and that the word can mean unspoken, which points to something quieter than tongues. We read it as the Spirit helping every believer pray, with tongues one way many experience that help.
Ask. Jesus said the Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. You do not need someone to coach you through syllables or to work yourself into an emotional state. Pray in your own language first, then open your mouth in faith and speak to God without worrying how it sounds. If nothing comes right away, keep praying without feeling rushed.